We’re okay on first names here right? I’m Matt, PSU Law ’09 (We are!). Anyways, you and your wife first came across my radar some nine years ago not for any Buffalo association or prospects regarding their two professional teams but because of your Penn State associations. I’d played intramural floor hockey there with a team of classmates, a collection of hockey fans of the Pens, Flyers, Islanders, Rangers, Flames and yes, the Sabres. We’d occasionally talk about how Penn State had the ideal student body to support a D1 hockey team and now here you were a year or so after graduation, fresh from cashing out on a lucrative career facilitated by Pennsylvania’s lack of environmental regulations to provide that. Your philanthropy at the time seemed to be a godsend that occasionally but not often happened from Nittany Lion alums and seemed tailored to us specifically. There was to be a cash bomb to hire the best staff, recruit the best players and most of all, provide a state of the art arena, a student section with bleachers as steep as the fire code would allow, an arena tailored to enhance crowd noise and intimidate schools steeped in tradition like Michigan and Minnesota. The facilities were to be the best for training, practicing and teaching the players the game.

And you delivered. The arena that bares your name has one of the loudest atmospheres in the collegiate game. The coach is fantastic. The players are not merely consistently good but they consistently find their way to NHL rosters. They were a game away from the Frozen Four five years into their existence and this year merely two goals away from another tournament berth. The team has provided an excuse for reunions with my friends that may not have otherwise happened so for that cash bomb I will always be thankful.

I’ve been a Sabres fan as long as I can remember. The nuances have been discussed here before but I think having an absent dad, raised by my grandfather and mom, plus the affordability, easier commute and less debaucherous atmosphere contributed to me going to Sabres games much more as a kid. I had my first girlfriend in 1999, attended game four by myself, game five the next year with my grandfather in the last game we’d attend together. I attended game one against the flyers in 2006 with my college sweetheart, graduated college on three hours sleep from the delirium of Pominville’s winner. So many wonderful moments of my life are intertwined with that franchise, a proud one that for their first forty years only missed the playoffs three years in a row once. Family, friends and times now long gone that can be remembered fondly with that team.

A couple months after the Penn State announcement your name started to be floated around regarding the Sabres. This was welcome for numerous reasons but at the core it was that we’d become discouraged as to the state of the franchise and what its purpose was. Ownership and management had made very clear back in 2007 that success was not worth paying above a certain amount. They took the best team in the league and languished, a team without its leadership, without a reliable backup goalie, narrowly missing the playoffs two years in a row. Sure, they followed that up with a division winner but even that team was missing something. We weren’t being unreasonable, we just had a standard. In ten years they’d made the Stanley cup finals once, been 20 minutes away from it again, won a president’s trophy, made another conference final and been some 77 seconds away from another one. To then take their foot off the gas, to try to cobble a couple seasons together with a mishmash of spare parts and vets wasn’t acceptable. We needed an owner to whom success wasn’t merely the easiest way to turn a profit, it was the entire point.

I listened to your press conference in the car, on the lonely eight-plus hour drive back to Barre, Vermont. After the press conference I listened to WGR the rest of the way back. In early 2011 I extremely did not have my shit together, sleeping on a mattress on the floor above an insane fundamentalist Christian family, listening to games on my phone while sitting in a camping chair playing video games, digging my car out from a new snowstorm every two weeks, drinking a bottle of wine or two a night. But listening to you wax poetic about the Sabres role in your life, your love for the French Connection, the sole purpose of existence being a title, the deprioritizing of profits in favor of bringing in the best and the brightest, it brought tears to my eyes and chills up my spine. Here was this unfathomably rich couple and somehow their connection to the team was the same as mine! These weren’t cold, calculating venture capitalists, this were people with an emotional connection to the team. I trudged in the snow to watch you be introduced before the Ottawa game, trudged to that same bar to watch the vast majority of games the rest of the way, having honest to god tears watching them run the clock out against Philly and then win it in overtime. Gutting game 6 and 7 aside, hockey was back and we couldn’t wait for more.

The local press was a bit unfair to you at the start weren’t they? Some were deeply condescending to Kim, others had this bizarre obsession with somehow tying you to the Penn State scandal, trying to follow the hockey program money as if it would end up in Sandusky’s legal fund. It was gross and upsetting to me both as an alum and as a Sabres fan; you’d made this amazing gesture with your money, rescued my favorite team from the dead and now some pencil neck like Mike Harrington or sausage neck like Bucky Gleason felt like taking potshots? Fuck that.

After narrowly missing the playoffs in 2012 you didn’t hesitate during a slow start in the lockout season to fire an icon in Lindy Ruff. This was fine, many of us thought the modern game had passed him by (despite his success with the modern game 05-07 and 09-11) and with the mid-aughts core slowly aging out of their prime it was time for a full reset. We were all on board with this; it showed you were paying attention as much as the fans, were frustrated along with the fans and unlike the fans, had the power to make clear that the fans deserved better. We knew things might get ugly. We were still with you.

The point was you didn’t have to buy them, nothing you’d ever said led anyone to believe you would buy them, and besides your interest in the NFL seemed passive anyways. That said, I was ecstatic when you came out of nowhere with your offer and blew Toronto and some television blowhard away. Both teams were safe and that was because of your finances. Despite the last place Sabres finish the previous year there was a plan. They grabbed the best offensive prospect in Sam Reinhart and word was there were two kids coming out the following year that could change the trajectory of whoever was lucky enough to draft them. I was sold.

It’s been five years. I guess the only thing that’s up in the air now is to ask which one is it? Were you lying to us in 2011, or did your priorities, your expectations, your goals for this club change? It’s either one or the other. Whichever one it is begs the simple follow up question, why?

Last season was the most disappointing season in franchise history, at least comparing expectations to results. The team had shown growth under Bylsma, albeit slow growth hampered with a few big whiffs by the general manager. You had your core but development was too slow. This highly touted Nashville assistant and former star was to get things on track. What happened was the team fell off the cliff; the season was dead by Halloween, they finished worst in the league yet again. It was baldly obvious that this coach was not the answer- you can’t improve in skill and get worse. The time for losing was over and while Dahlin was a hell of a silver lining, at some point wins have to be expected. To me and many fans, the 17-18 performance could not have shown more clearly that Phil Housley’s vision was not cut out for this league, at least as a head coach. Your reaction was to do nothing.

During this time you’ve been quite busy. You tag along on college pro days, you follow the Bills GM and coaches around to meetings, you acquire massive swaths of property throughout Buffalo for presumably a modern NFL stadium. You pop up in the New York Times on owner transcripts, fretting about the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement, calling Anquan Boldin by the wrong name, complaining about sponsorship issues with the hockey team (which had been at the bottom of the league for several years by this point). You’re there in the locker room in Miami when they break the playoff drought with the third coach of your short tenure. It would appear that you’re obviously smitten with the level of influence financially and otherwise that comes with being part of the NFL owners club. It would appear that you’ve realized it is this the real ticket to gaining more property and business influence in Western New York and otherwise. Of course, when we all met you eight years ago we didn’t think that real estate, business development or influence were your goals. We didn’t just assume that- you told us explicitly, in probably the clearest press conference you’ve ever given in your life. So did you lie? Or did you just change?

It’s hard to describe the damage that these Sabres seasons have done to the fanbase, to the discourse, to the actual love of hockey in the region. Last year for the first time I canceled my hockey package, before Thanksgiving; the prospect of spending three hours feeling sad or angry didn’t appeal to me, not in a world such as today’s with children being kept in modern concentration camps, mothers, fathers ripped out of hospitals, courtrooms, car accidents and shipped to countries they’ve never set foot in. Mass shootings of students, movie buffs, concert goers, night club attendees, churchgoers. A world that we know will be worse for our children than it is for us and will likely be worse for our grandkids than it is for our kids. This year I canceled it just after Valentine’s Day.

Something that was once nearly as much of my identity as my loved ones (what I wouldn’t have done to have had gamecenter as an option as a 1L in 2006-07) was for the first time not worth my time. Did you notice any of this a year ago? Did you follow the season? Did you see the empty seats, hear the silent, discouraged crowd? Did you hear about the collapse of the secondary market, people unwilling to pay $10 to take in that team? How many listless performances did you watch? I ask because you sold yourself as a die-hard Sabres fan, a lifelong Sabres fan, a fan desperate to bring a Stanley Cup nay, multiple Stanley Cups. Certainly you had to have watched, had to have solicited viewpoints not just from your employees but from the fans, from the media. Surely you must have listened to WGR once in a while, read The Buffalo News recapping yet another dreary night on Washington Street. Surely you must have heard from your accountants about the failure of the World Juniors, been surprised since that had been such a boon for the economy and fanbase back in 2010. Surely you must have heard about season ticket figures. Surely you knew one year ago that things were dire.

So did you lie? Or did you just change?

After hitting on Dahlin and getting Skinner I don’t think it was unreasonable for anyone to demand a competitive team. While I thought I may have skewed close to unreasonable- I wanted meaningful March hockey and 5 points or less from the playoffs- it seemed everyone was at least demanding improvement-marked improvement- from such a disappointment. After the opener I was prepared to cut my subscription in the first month of the season but a funny thing started happening- they looked competent.

It’s hard to describe the win streak aside from just so needed. It was the month before my wedding, they demolished Ottawa during my stag and despite a loss the next day didn’t lose until my parents were at our place putting together gift bags the night before heading to the venue. Once again I was screaming, jumping off my couch, wearing my jerseys and gear out to the bars, blasting DJ Kool when it came on in my car. Were they back?

When it ended they were in first place and honestly anything but a total collapse would result not just in meaningful March hockey but a playoff berth for the first time since you came into the picture all those years ago. They’d have their first fifty goal scorer since I was a kid. They may not have the depth to roll through the playoffs, they may be unpolished and a little young but a message was going to be sent to Boston, Montreal and most of all Toronto that the Sabres were going to need to be considered moving forward. When we moved at the start of 2019 I had early April pegged for my first trip home centered around a party in the plaza, showing my wife over four years after we met just why I was celebrating those losses the first weeks of our courtship, taking in playoff hockey not as a student or as a flailing entry level employee desperately trying to find his way, but as a happy newlywed whose career had finally carved a path of modest comfort. The Sabres had always been there and I was going to be there for them.

Not only did this not happen, everyone involved in managing the team and everyone in charge of overseeing that management did nothing. As the team clung to their playoff spot, the shortcomings and holes obvious, your General Manager did nothing. When he made call-ups, your coach- whose wife’s doomed senate campaign you eagerly opened your checkbook for- refused to play them outright or played them with his boat anchors. As they sunk in the standings these same two men refused to take action. The things their very job descriptions call for- building a roster and implementing winning strategy- did not take place. By the time a trade was made they were fading from contention and the coach never modified any of his philosophies even as his players proved they needed to be changed.

Did you ever dive into the facts and figures of this season? Did you ever watch and notice how the coach played his worst players immediately after scoring goals? Did you then notice that they had a problem with immediately surrendering goals after scoring, killing their momentum? Did you notice he had the same tendency to do this in the closing minutes of periods and games and that it elicited similar problems? Did you follow the fact that when he was called up Pilut immediately looked like the second best defenseman on the roster? Did you notice the coach greeted that revelation with ping ponging him between the ice and press box, eventually adding Rochester into the mix? Did you notice goalies were decided based on results, not performance? Did you notice the dismay of the fans? Did you feel frustration when the coach would bring out the same tired platitudes about effort, about chances? Did you hear your GM talk about this season as a success merely because it was better than the previous season? Did you watch as your new star went from a shoo-in for fifty to not even reaching forty? Have you noticed your GM has failed to sign that star long-term? Certainly a die-hard, lifelong fan would feel dismay, anger at the coach and GM standing idly by as the season drifts off the road and then off the cliff. All the ones I know sure did.

So did you lie? Or did you just change?

Last week, you granted a rare interview. Symbolically Arizona could have been a trillion miles from Buffalo where the hockey team was going through yet another listless performance in what would end up being a two-win March. You were asked about your team, this team you have loved since you were a young man, this team you supposedly went to see with your wife the day after your wedding. This team for which nothing but a Stanley Cup was once the goal but who had not sniffed the playoffs in seven years. Certainly this was unacceptable. No one expected you to fire folks over the television but certainly you empathized and shared the frustration of your fellow fans?

Instead, you lauded Housley’s playing days, days that ended before one generation of fans entered school and before the newest generation of fans was even born. You called him a young coach which I assume referred to his coaching career and not his actual age. You said the team was young, that they would grow despite the fact that the team isn’t that young anymore. You deferred to your GM, the same one who refused to call for help when the ship was sinking, alluded to the coach being safe, saying things needed to change but you “didn’t know what.” You made vague statements about Tim Horton’s, McDonald’s and the New England Patriots that alluded to the importance of continuity. For the first time you sounded like what you are, an aloof owner whose team is simply not a priority. You were busy, busy talking up a new football stadium and gearing up for the fights that will bring. You wanted to tag along with Brandon Beane, talk shop, you seemed like the hockey team was literally the last thing you wanted to discuss. It was a long way from “where’s Perreault?”

There can no longer be any debate that these are the darkest days in the history of the franchise. The roster is stocked with exponentially more talent than it was five years ago but their performance has not improved. No one associated with the team has had the temerity to say that this is not acceptable. That in itself is unfathomable based on the franchise’s first forty seasons or based on the path taken in 2013. This is a zombie franchise far more under your watch than it ever was under the watch of hucksters like Golisano or criminals like the Rigas family. Frankly, you seem over their failures as much as fans who have checked out. You have more positive things to do than worry about your hockey team! You can talk up Josh Allen, your coach everyone seems to love, the new signings. You can talk about property development and growth in the canalside area.

Meanwhile your hockey management team seems to have picked up the “culture” and “process” buzzwords in a vain attempt to spin the massive failure of the past two seasons as things just going according to plan. The hockey-first fans don’t buy it of course as they aren’t rubes like the football-first crowd but that matters little, right?

I’m not sure you realized when you presented yourself as a die-hard, lifelong fan how many people actually met that description. I’m not sure you realized how many Buffalonians, spread all over the continent, settled in on their couches three times a week, six months a year to watch the hockey team. I’m not sure you realized how many fans devour stats and performance metrics of your team, how many can easily discover that excuses provided by the coach failed to hold water. I’m not sure you understood what was happening in the city in November, what was happening over Thanksgiving weekend as a region and a fanbase dared to dream the darkness was over. I know you don’t understand how it felt the weeks and months after that, as the team and those leading it plunged themselves and us along with them right back into the abyss, the light gone again. As the season ends that light disappears permanently for another group of fans who say “no more,” leaving fewer of us to attempt to muster another season of hope, recycling memories long gone and not knowing if those memories are strong enough to make it through another winter, a car battery on its last legs. The legions who will sign on to be disappointed, embarrassed, patronized will dwindle yet again, leaving fewer of us to muster yet another season, pilot lights barely flickering, ready to be extinguished before the first snowfall.

Did you lie? Or did you just change?

You are the worst case scenario. You are so far removed from what you presented to the world in early 2011 that anyone predicting this back then would have been dismissed immediately as not just a pessimist, but an idiot. I defended the manner through which you obtained your riches to my more woke friends because to me you were no different than a close friend I disagreed with over taxes or guns. You were a Sabres fan goddammit and so long as you were working to bring a cup to Buffalo then I couldn’t give a shit as to how you made your money. I warned people five years ago that you didn’t owe the city anything more, you didn’t need to open your pocketbook for the football team because Ralph made the bed and after all you weren’t even a football guy! As people fretted over the hiring of poor coaches I told my friends something like “you don’t get to be that successful without knowing to kick people out when they aren’t doing their job.” Turns out I was the idiot.

Your reign has created an atmosphere where something as exciting and big as the Frozen Four is coming to your arena and no one cares to go. It’s not merely their love for the team that is suffering, it is their love for the sport. If you are concerned about continuity in coaching, if you are concerned with your reputation in the league, let me assure you that every minute that passes with Phil Housley in charge of that team only makes it worse. You know what’s worse than firing people willy-nilly every 18 months? Keeping the worst coach in franchise history because you’re afraid of your image. That’s what cowards do and that’s what people who ultimately do not care about the success of their franchise do. You have taken a franchise that for people of a certain age holds far more of a connection and brings up far more fond memories than the football team and you have effectively watched it slowly die. You’re nothing more than a 19th century British MP watching the Great Famine unfold and brushing it off because after all, there’s stadium blueprints and a football draft coming up.

I watched No Goal in ninth grade at the house of a friend who would nearly 20 years later be my best man. After the shock- and being unaware of the conflagration whipping up over the goal call- I hopped on my bike to go home. I remember saying to myself that it was okay, they’ll just win it all next year. I said something similar to myself in 2000, in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011. Failure is a part of every aspect of life and sports are of course no different; being a Buffalo fan has always made that clear. I’ve only grown stronger in my appreciation for my fellow fans and those who we share these experiences with.

What has also become clear as I’ve grown from a 15 year old to a 35 year old is that powerful people lie. They lie to get what they want, they lie to avoid questions or scrutiny, they lie because they can. I’m not sure if you lied because the Sabres were your way in, I’m not sure if you lied because you felt it would ease the scrutiny from media, I’m not sure if you lied because you just wanted to be the hero. But I know this:

I hope to have a proper post to discuss the Sabres season- rock bottom for yet another season in a row- when I'm no longer cross-eyed and in need of drugs to dull the rage about it. Luckily one Bills beat writer, one Matt Parrino provided us with some content with yet another asinine post whining about Antonio Brown. I've saved you the time of FJM'ing that with your own incredulous remarks below.

Why can’t Antonio Brown let go of Buffalo? Fans are so over him (Commentary)There are LOTS of things that call for commentary right now in Buffalo sports. This isn't it.

So this whole Antonio Brown thing just won’t go away, will it? You’re literally the only one on my feed talking about it

Buffalo is ready to move on. Good! Finally! The QB still can't throw, the RB's can be carbon dated and that doesn't even begin to get at things like children in cages and the special olympics of all things being defunded. Let's talk about those things, or that new brewery in North Tonawanda.

Nobody likes to feel unwanted and Brown has made it clear he didn’t and doesn’t want Buffalo. He’s been persistent in his efforts to remind Bills Mafia of his feelings.

But why? Who cares.

Why is Brown posting memes poking at the fan base and revealing private conversations with his agent to prove he didn’t want Buffalo? You know Instagram has other athletes. Celebrities too.

There isn’t a lot of clarity about the why but there is some irony in the melodrama. Is the irony the fact that you and half the fanbase are whining about being thought of as small time while continuing to be hung up on some random athlete’s social media, thus proving you are small time?

When Brown decided to rock the foundation of the Steelers organization — no-showing the 2018 finale and demanding a trade, while setting fire to his market value — rocking the now infamous yellow mustache, he explained why he wanted out of Pittsburgh. Employers are not your friend and maximizing your value should be paramount for the employee.

Brown did an interview with ESPN in the midst of the saga and before the much-maligned wide receiver was traded to Oakland (the Raiders won four games last season while the Bills won six) The raiders have a quarterback who can throw straight and don’t have to get their dicks kicked in twice a season by the patriots. Also I really wouldn’t use the fact that the Bills went from nine wins to six and averaged about 15 points a game while doing it as a positive. He had issues with Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, and Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert didn’t seem to agree with Brown’s frustrations.

“If our guys were smart, they would listen to (Roethlisberger) because he’s been there, he’s done it,” said Colbert, who believes Roethlisberger was within his rights as a leader to question Brown’s play publicly last season. “He has 52 kids under him. I want them to step up and say, ‘Ben, what do I have to do? Can I do this better? What do we have to do to win a Super Bowl?’” We can already tell which guy at NY Upstate will be against unionization.

Brown responded to Colbert and gave insight into why he wanted out of Pittsburgh.

“What grown man is calling another grown man a kid? 'Fifty-two kids.' Like, you don't have no respect for these guys? Like, these are the guys that go to work for you, Brown told ESPN. “And that's what I'm telling you guys ... that's my issue. You know what I'm saying? It's all about respect.”

Is it, Antonio? Respect for the employee, not some jorts wearing shitbag from Gowanda who has a stick family of assault rifles on their car and throws half empty blue lights at fans wearing opposing jerseys on Autumn weekends

Is it all about respect?

If it is then why are you slinging shade at a city that only ever wanted to embrace you? Buffalo covets great players and they treat them like gods. It was pretty clear that fan desire for Brown was lukewarm at best but it’s nice that you ignore that here to continue your false narrative pity part. Why was this the case? Well it seems that by attempting to maximize his value and hold some control over his employment situation he was seen as a “troublemaker” and “controversial.” He also danced after touchdowns, a big no-no to the tiki torch crowd that piles into RWS parking lots every weekend.

Also, do they really covet great players? How would we know? You don’t have to go very far to find complaints about Jack Eichel’s work ethic. Folks were ready to ship Shady out until he started donating his seats to local terror agents in badges. The QB to end the drought was hated- not disliked, hated- by a slew of folks now eager to talk about how completion percentage is meaningless in football. The next “great” Bills player will be the first since Lynch…how was he received here, by the way?

Brown put out the first episode of his new podcast “The Boomin Experience Podcast.” This sounds like an inapplicable thing to cover as a BUFFALO BILLS BEAT REPORTER. On it he released a conversation with his agent Drew Rosenhaus, which detailed the teams that were interested in trading for him. New England, Philadelphia and Oakland were all mentioned and discussed as landing spots, but when Rosenhaus mentioned that Buffalo had shown interest he told Brown he wouldn’t even give the team a number on a potential new contract because his client had no interest in playing for the Bills.

“Yeah, don’t waste any time,” Brown said. Sounds smart. When I was looking to move regional offices in my company I didn’t send Knoxville an application because fuck that.

The podcast was a clear and direct message aimed at the city of Buffalo to clarify Brown’s position: he never wanted to come here. Again, as the sovereign in charge of where he wants to go, this seems not only well within his rights but completely reasonable considering:

The offense sucks

They haven’t won a playoff game in over 20 years

The last time they made the playoffs they got rid of nearly every skill player who had a role

The quarterback who ostensibly has to get Antonio Brown the ball is

Not accurate on short passes

Not accurate on medium passes

Not accurate on deep passes

Was picked by the Bills without any credence given to the fact that the number 4 was true throughout a college career facing such staunch defenses as Colorado State and Hawaii

The coach and GM have made clear that they wish to rely on the run game, erroneously and publically stating that the local climate is colder, windier and harsher than elsewhere in the league despite this being demonstrably false

The franchise has shown and spoken to a need for “their guys” which seems to be a very specific type that does not rely on

talent

Antonio Brown shared audio of a trade conversation he had with agent Drew Rosenhaus. #Patriots, #Eagles, #Titans, #Bills and #Raiders all discussed in the audio. AB makes it clear he didn't want Buffalo. Belichick and #Steelers GM Kevin Colbert did speak. In the process of doing this post I noticed he used those hashtags to actually link to the team twitter accounts of each of those teams. This has nothing to do with content but I find it funny.

Thanks, Antonio. Buffalo needed that extra jab. What extra jab? Transparency from star athletes and the machinations of sports labor is something fans are rarely able to see behind the curtain. This level of candidness and transparency is frankly refreshing. Then again it’s probably something we should hate because it gave you an example to make this all about Buffalo.

It was a nice follow up to that meme he shared with him hand-gesturing away from a Bills logo. Memes!​Brown also said on his podcast that he’s enjoyed feeling the love from everyone in the aftermath of the trade.Glad to hear it. It’s nice when we’re spreading love in this world.

So why are you spreading hate when it comes to Bills Mafia? Again, he didn’t spread any fucking hate. Buffalo is currently the 81st largest city in the country so I think you are woefully overestimating its importance in the world. The story is far more about Brown successfully orchestrating an exit from Pittsburgh and his- perhaps false!- belief that Jon Gruden and a team that’s going through an ugly extrication of its own is an upgrade. It’s not hard to avoid checking social media posts of athletes, they’re usually remarkably lame or brand based nonsense and the fact an athlete uses his to a) show transparency in the shadowy world of professional sports business and b) have some fun for once in a fucking while is not an insult. It is refreshing. Listen, this situation is played out and everyone involved, especially Bills fans, are more than ready to move on Lmao bro you’ve spent a week highlighting corny platitudes from team employees, complaining about social media posts and claiming that Buffalo is horribly ridiculed by everyone who encounters a mere mention or former resident of the place. But don’t ever let anyone make you feel bad about sticking up for your city. Actually if you’re super aggressive and touchy about your city you probably should feel bad for being such a baby.

I think Bills general manager Brandon Beane and coach Sean McDermott put it best.“Don’t speak about Buffalo if you don’t know what this city and what this fan base is like,” Beane said. Brandon Beane knows Buffalo so well he designed a roster based on a climate that Buffalo doesn’t have and drafted a quarterback for that non-existent climate. As a matter of fact, Brandon Beane has built a roster that seems solely based on Johnny Carson and Jay Leno jokes about Buffalo.

McDermott added: “Perception and reality are not always the same,” McDermott said. “Spend a day, spend a week in Buffalo. Get around the people, get around the city, get around the energy in our city. People that say (Buffalo is undesirable landing spot for NFL players) haven’t spent that time and really maybe don’t want to spend that time. To me that’s on them.”

At no point during any of this exhausting bullshit was it said or implied that the spurning of the Bills had anything to do with the city or the people. I have lived away from Buffalo for most of the last thirteen years (if we count Bonaventure, kick it up to half my life). I studied abroad for a semester in college, I traveled abroad a couple years back. I’m married to a non-Buffalonian. I have never, not once heard an insult about the city beyond the fact that its sports teams are shitty (accurate) or that the suburb I grew up is racist (VERY accurate). I spent most of these years actually wearing Buffalo gear and every single conversation usually goes something like:

Them: did you grow up there?Me: YepThem: that’s cool

Occasionally they’ll change it up and it’ll be:

Them: so you a Bills fan?Me: unfortunatelyThem: that’s rough I’m a [team that has not even remotely as tortured a past] fan

If I’m wearing Buffalo stuff I am 100% more likely to encounter a fellow ex-pat than I am anyone even remotely negative about the area. Everyone- including the author here who made it sound like his travels have been a Locked Up Abroad level nightmare of insults and confrontations over his precious home- prefers to believe they’ve been insulted because that would mean they matter outside their area.

I’m here to tell you that’s false. I have a Bills magnet on my car (in New England!) and all I got for my trouble was a fellow Bills fan giving me a thumbs up. No one cares.

Ultimately this is more pathetic than if Antonio Brown held a Facebook Live stream and proceeded to spend two hours trashing the Darwin Martin House. For about half a decade now there’s a new article out every month talking about how great Buffalo is. The Guardian sent someone. The New York Times sent someone. The Washington Post sent someone. The Boston Globe sent someone. Every fucking month there’s another piece published talking about the affordability, the resurgence, the upswing, the rebirth, every damned cliché you can think of. They go to the waterfront. They go to the wing joints. They go to the Albright and they return to their metropolis and write about HOW FUCKING NICE YOUR TOWN IS.

The desire not to play in Buffalo is fine but it’s Brown’s consistent disrespect in the aftermath of his trade to Oakland that’s also on him. Fuck you it is.

When the NFL official Instagram account posted the initial report that the Bills were close to a trade for Brown, he commented on the post: “fake news.” But in the end the only thing fake in this entire exasperating drama is Brown himself.

Antonio Brown is the only one in this entire cursed narrative that has been honest. He immediately squashed erroneous reports. He confirmed his desire not to go to Buffalo. He thanked his fans. He was honest about his problems with his former employer, honest with his agent about where he wanted to work and released actual fucking audio of those conversations. He is less fake than every national and local writer who had him heading to WNY. He is less fake than every Bills mafia loser who photoshopped him in a sexy blue jersey in the middle of the night. He is more real than any and everyone who made this a civic matter. He is more real than a beat reporter whose job description calls for objectivity but in practice is little more than a PR lackey for management and ownership. He is more real than someone whose position calls for holding people accountable but merely acts as hype man for a 6-10 franchise and a NFL quarterback who can’t throw a ten-yard out. He is more real than someone who claims fans are little more than petulant babies who can’t accept a grown man desiring to work elsewhere.

Years ago we used to complain about sports reporters being too negative; Lynch and Stevie got ran out of town, honest to god playoff hockey was derided as the “heroic march to 8th,” GMs and owners were excoriated for their frugality and the writers seemed to have open animosity not just for their readers but for the town THEY found themselves working in.

They are gone thank goodness but in their place is a new crop of jabbering hucksters who serve not to criticize but to placate and compliment at the worst possible time. We are in the worst era in Buffalo sports history, make no mistake about it. Yet the GM and Coach who were handed a playoff team and petulantly shoved it away are “privately complimented throughout NFL circles.” I’m not sure who started it, maybe Jonah Javad with his insecure rantings about Stephon Gilmore desiring to play for the greatest team in league history instead of one of its most forgettable. Hucksters like Nate Geary, claiming Nate Peterman could make throws Tyrod couldn’t and first refusing to back down before pretending that he wasn’t posting preseason gifs and jabbering about back-shoulder throws. Hucksters like this guy, who I’ve been aware of for about six months but has in that time become the spokesperson for insincere homerism.

Christ, at least Ed Kilgore was transparent enough to actual work for a Pegula institution instead of doing its work for a quarter of the price.

There is a case to be made that the Pegulas are the worst thing to ever happen to Buffalo sports. They have destroyed the team they purchased first twice over and seem to care little about it beyond the role it played in them getting their NFL team. There is no reason to have any confidence that a single hire they have ever made was smart or will ultimately result in on-field or on-ice success. They have received a pass because the fanbase is too pathetic to realize that merely existing isn’t good enough, there must be success. And the people who are supposed to tell the fans that yes, they should demand success, they should demand heads on pikes when that doesn’t happen are instead too busy telling you that a player wanting to go elsewhere is a deep civic insult, that the autonomy one person has over their career is something to be upset about, that not only does this person hate your city, everyone else does too.

The role of the Buffalo Bills in my life is one of those odd things that became larger when I lived away from WNY. Their descent into the league’s also-rans coincided with a parade of new and exciting things to devote ones time to- the Sabres had the best player on the planet, my mom got us our first computer, there were dances, dates, practices and games to focus on. All those Sundays in high school, I can’t think of a single Sunday spent gathering friends together for a Bills game. Sure, there was a Super Bowl party at someone’s house every year where we would root for whatever random ass team we felt like (Remember Giants-Ravens? Woof)- we even rooted for the Patriots to beat the Rams which I promise made sense in January 2002. When it came to the Bills there was just no real enthusiasm, not when our childhood memories were filled with Super Bowl parties where the stakes and the extravagance were much higher. However, the Sabres were a different story. 1999, 2000, 2001 we’d find ourselves at someone’s house for playoff games, yelling at the television and having our first experimentations with the host’s father’s liquor cabinet (I can still taste vodka and Pepsi whenever I think about it).

This dynamic rarely changed in the years that followed. Sure, the 2004 playoff push brought things back slightly but how much of it was assisted by the NHL lockout? My only Bills-related memory I have from college took place my senior year in 2005; I was eager to sleep off the previous night during the game as usual when my roommate knocked on my door. He was regretting the girl he brought home the previous evening and dismayed that she not only had not yet left but that she seemed to be showing all intentions to watch the Bills game with him; he wanted me to join so he could have someone else to talk to. So I trudge out and we watched yet another terrible game in a terrible season while having 4-8 beers to dull the previous evening. By the fourth quarter he had revived his beer goggles to the point that he brought this girl back to his room, still the only mid-afternoon occurrence of beer goggles that I have ever seen. Point is, as a lifelong WNYer by that point the Bills were always an afterthought.

Here’s a weird thing when you leave the area: if you are from a town with an NFL team, that is oftentimes the number one thing people will associate you with. On fall Mondays at Penn State, classmates would greet me with Bills talk. Working in Vermont, Maryland or Pennsylvania, coworkers often did the same, almost requiring you to pay more attention to the Bills, lest you seem aloof (which I am at work anyways), weird (why would you hate a team from where you’re from), or un-relatable. At the same time, outside of WNY the Bills serve as a conduit to connect with people from home in whatever strange new town you find yourself in. I made friends in Baltimore, ran into a college friend in D.C., shared a crushing loss in Burlington and enjoyed $5 blue light pitchers in Harrisburg. Most notably I shared the moment that ended the drought with a bar full of Bills fans in the very city where the drought ended. The Bills provide a sense of community that is almost stronger outside the 716 than it is inside and if you don’t believe me, head down to Baltimore for opening weekend.​The Bills play a more prominent role to me now than they did then (the Sabres sad state certainly plays a role in this); I’m marrying into a family and friend group of NFL fans and in a place as economically depressed and socially backwards as the 717 having a bar full of 716ers as an option every Sunday is a relief. It’s also what makes what the current administration of regressive, short-sighted, arrogant hacks have done to the franchise so unforgivable.

The Future is Foreseeable

Ownership and management were handed a team that broke the drought in a season they hoped to pick top-10 and instead of building upon that set them on a course that will inevitably end in disaster. There is no debate about what will happen, there is no process deserving of trust, there are no developments that will cause any different result than what is going to happen:

-Brandon Beane will be fired in the next three to four years-Sean McDermott will be fired in the next three to five years-Josh Allen will unceremoniously become a free agent when his rookie contract expires and will likely never play in the NFL again

These are set in stone and all three were avoidable. These men will leave the franchise at a lower point than at any time during the drought and will leave a fanbase trudging along, only closer to death than they are right now, hoping the same incompetent, befuddled owners can somehow, someday hire the right people. The only course of action for us to do is hope it plays out as quickly as possible so we can get it over with and hope the next team of dunces is somehow better.​Brandon Beane can be admired for having a plan and refusing to deviate it in the same way people like Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld can be admired for doing the same. His hubris will serve as a cautionary tale in the same way hubris destroyed the reputations of the above men and in a football sense Beane will be inextricably linked to the disaster he is about to lead, no different than George Pickett. He will be remembered in Buffalo as a misguided fool whose arrogance wrecked the Bills closest return to relevance in twenty years. Sean McDermott will be remembered as a well-meaning simpleton whose humility smacked of disingenuousness, who tried to piece together a team of projects, busts and players who are simply not good enough and lead it to actual success. The Western New York media and the more naïve and pathetic portions of the fanbase are spinning this as an underdog team. This is not that, this is a terrible team. This will not be exciting; this will be a massacre. All goodwill that could be mustered from a team dragging their coaching staff and DISAPPOINTED General Manager to the playoffs will have long dissipated after years of McDermott’s tepid gameplans, regressive field position strategy and incompetent challenge acumen. These men wanted full control to prove what they can do and you better fucking believe they are about to show their what they can do.

I don’t remember my first Sabres game very well. I was three or four and my uncle, a Buffalo firefighter, had been offered four or five tickets from his neighbor for a game. Like most people when recalling memories of such a young age, it’s just a snapshot; first row right behind the net on the glass at the Aud. I remember the awe I felt at the speed, the brightness of the ice, the size of the players, the noise- especially the noise- the excitement of sharing something not just with my family but with so many strangers of all ages.

As I got older and attended more games, my grandfather went from having to briskly pull me along with him by the hand to just waiting for me to catch up to walking side by side to waiting for me to stop and let him catch up to having to taking my hand as we headed down the stairs. By the end, when he couldn’t go to games anymore, our conversations about the team were abstract, about how yes, they did have one fantastic player but that someday soon they would be back to the team we knew, the team I grew up with.

It’s 2018. My grandfather is gone and the uncle’s been estranged from the family for a decade. It only makes sense that my relationship with the Sabres has deteriorated to a point I’m unsure I can get back from.

There really is no other way to coin the 2017-2018 Buffalo Sabres except for the worst team in franchise history. Points-wise, it may only be the third worst of the 82-game era, but you don’t need to masturbate over @ineffectivemath to fully understand the scope of what just happened here. There may be those who did not expect them to challenge for a playoff spot this year- I would have said those people weren’t expecting enough from their no longer inexperienced roster. This is a league where teams go from the lottery to the playoffs on an annual basis, where Edmonton is an aberration not an excuse. Eichel was healthy, Okposo was back, the defense had been shored up, there was a slew of prospects ready to take the next step and they even brought back someone who’d actually won a bunch of playoff series’ in this city. The coach blamed for the late season car crash was gone as was the GM who’d whiffed on most of his drafts. The tank was over, it was time to demand- and frankly, expect- wins.

Five games into the season, they had one point. I’d traveled out to New York for the second game of the year against the Islanders and left my seat after the first period. I drank beer in the concourse for a period then left, embarrassed. They were 3-7-2 at Halloween and by Thanksgiving, at 5-13-4 the season was already over. The Bills played competitive games a month and a half longer than the Sabres did this season; whereas the Sabres were always what rescued us from caring about the Bills after November, the Bills rescued us from the Sabres.

The entire season from that point on was a miserable slog that only a sadist or an asshole could enjoy. During 2014-15 I purchased gamecenter and watched nearly every game, asking for it on at bars, still rooting for wins well into March before “okay, time to lock it down” took over for the last couple weeks. The two seasons after were the same thing, despite the growing pains and long stretches of uninspired mediocrity, I couldn’t not watch, it was a routine I’d been in since high school. As I said before the season started, the Sabres were to be a reprieve from the mundane slog of adulthood, through the anxieties and fear that today’s world brings on a daily basis. They were to be something to kick back with over a beer and to get excited about and perhaps, to once again enjoy watching once it became shorts and t-shirt weather again. There were rivalries that were going to reignite, rivalries to be born and this was to be a time of resurgence, to remember why we’d stuck with them so long.

Instead they exacerbated the daily horrors around us, showed us that they too would not bring solace, that our lives are indeed better without them playing such a role in it. Before this season, the longest I’d gone without watching them was studying abroad in 2004, pre-smartphone and without internet in our apartment and even then, every morning when I got to campus I’d scour the TBN website for stories of the previous night’s game, chat with my friends from home on AIM about what was going on. This year I canceled gamecenter before December, caught them when I was home visiting and sat through two periods of another blowout, this one in Washington. On February 10th I was at Cole’s and had to actually ask for the game to be put on the television; when it was, we were the only ones watching it.

The team itself is toxic. Shifts, periods, games, weeks on end of uninspired, defeated play. The coach has effectively ruined his legacy as one of the best defensemen in franchise history, doomed to be remembered as one of the most ineffective, timid and befuddled coaches in franchise history. The GM that was supposed to add the final pieces to a playoff contender is now woefully out of his depth and tasked for a rebuild, and for no other reason than “idk, it seems rash,” they’re both going to be back next year. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, there is no cause for hope, there is no silver lining.

The problem is larger and runs deeper than I think anyone at Seymour Knox Plaza comprehends. The tank, which was really nothing more than step one of a rebuild, cutting dead weight and attempting to replenish the farm, was the correct move and that cannot be reasonably refuted, no matter how hard Bucky Gleason thinks Lee Stempniak was the missing piece. The problem was…everything else. The guys brought in were the wrong guys, the leaders were too weak the lead, the goalies were trash and 80% of the draft picks were useless. The roster ended up being a bunch of replacement-value or worse cannon fodder. The players brought in to fill holes ended up not being big enough to fill the hole, creating an even larger hole. The amount of dead cap space as well as the amount of cap space wasted on garbage players skyrocketed.

This isn’t even to speak of the collateral damage, which may be reach farther than even the pending rebuild. Why would anyone subject themselves to this product moving forward? The ancillary things Sabres Twitter complained about over the years are largely still there except now the product on the ice is even shittier. I’m willing to guarantee everyone reading this turned down tickets this season, perhaps even free tickets. It goes far beyond noise and puck stoppage gimmicks, it’s a matter the Sabres being a poor use of anyone’s time. This season I was happy to knock out a slew of shows with my fiancé, socialize more with friends when not feeling compelled to constantly check my phone. I was able to see more people when we were home because no longer was gathering tickets and taking up an evening at the arena an appealing option. Fellow lifelong fans have checked out, at the very least saying “call me when you’re good,” a call that frankly might never come.

At this point the only feeling I can muster towards the Sabres is resentment. I’ve been asked by multiple people recently if I still care about the team and the answer is grudgingly, yes. I will probably purchase gamecenter again next year, though like this year, their games will not play a factor into any other plans that may come up. I resent them wasting my time, I resent them sullying fond memories with their incompetence, I resent players who say the fans should be behind them more, players who martyr themselves because golly-gee, playing hockey just ain’t fun anymore. I resent the lip service to “the best fans in the league,” I resent Harrington articles telling me to like a shitty player like Josh Gorges and I resent fans telling me to be more of a friend than a fan over Ryan O’Reilly’s crippling case of the sadz. I resent them for acting like it’s understandable that this should be so fucking hard with Vegas, Colorado, and New Jersey hosting playoff games.

I’ve defended ownership for a while thanks to creating Penn State’s hockey program, keeping the teams in town, the canalside development, and TBN’s reckless and immediate attacks. As Harrington has always said, access is a privilege and ultimately it is up to the subject to provide that access. Demands for him to speak about the Penn State Sandusky/Paterno scandal was in remarkably bad faith given his lack of affiliation with the football program. Demands for him to speak about the tank were also in bad faith; whether the vendetta was an eagerness to tear down someone who had saved the franchise in 2011, animosity towards the existence of a female owner, or a general campaign to prove that TBN is not as impotent as they seem in local sports, I don’t know.

However, that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have to speak now. What he strove to convey upon the purchase in 2011 was that he was also a lifelong fan of the team, that he was determined to bring a cup to Buffalo, that he understood the pain of losing in the playoffs and the joys the team can bring. If this is true, the performance has to not only be infuriating as an owner but embarrassing and humiliating as a fan. Millions of fans are looking to him to fix this and now not once but twice, it has been completely destroyed on his watch. He may be just as lost as I am as to the next steps but what he needs to show is that he understands that this is rock bottom; that the franchise has never been as much as a collection of incompetents and as embarrassing to the fans as it is right now. And also, what the fuck is Russ Brandon doing there?

For years I’ve written previews and postmortems here; the previews were always generally too optimistic but that’s how I’ve gone into every season, excited, hopeful. The postmortems have generally been filled with disappointment but there was always the general thought that improvement was both inevitable and reasonable to see. The kids would be older, the locker room would gel, the befuddled coach would be gone, the dead weight would get lopped off. This time? I have absolutely no idea where they go from here and no idea how they fix this. All I know is I want a lot of people gone that probably won’t be gone with the puck is dropped in October. There are exciting prospects sure but when was the last time one of those panned out as more than a third liner? This team is FILLED with bottom six scrubs. There isn’t a goalie on the roster that elicits confidence for carrying the load for a full NHL season. The backline is an Ypres field hospital. No one can design a special teams gameplan to save their life. The KBC is going to be less traveled than a wake for someone nobody particularly liked very much. The roster is immensely unlikeable and they don’t seem to care about their jobs or each other. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever again care about the Sabres as I did the first thirty years since I sat between my uncle and grandfather at the Aud or if like those two men, that’s just gone forever.

Five days out, I’m still in enough disbelief that putting thoughts to type seem silly. I just know that after writing sporadically at best for nearly six years here at DGWU, what the hell is the point if I don’t at least put something together for the greatest Buffalo sports moment in a decade? It was something so incredible, so cathartic, so confounding that it brought emotions to me and many that we thought had been killed off long ago. Really, most of us had no comparison as adults, nothing to point to and say “if the Bills pull this off, it will be unforgettable.” Sure, it would have been the playoffs for the first time, and as I touched on a couple weeks back, after such a shitty year as 2017, such an end would undoubtedly be special. But tears? Below zero airport trips? Six figure donations to the charity of a guy that beat us this year? Unfathomable.

Last Sunday my fiancé and I woke up hungover from going out with friends for the Penn State win in the Fiesta Bowl. Our plan was to celebrate New Year’s at her cousin’s place in Baltimore, so after purchasing the requisite rolaids, iced coffee and Excedrin we hopped in the car for the 80 minute drive. My plan was to go to the Baltimore Bills bar in the Canton neighborhood to take in the game; I’d first gone there in 2014, the Bills OT win over the Bears being my first game. Since then I’d watched plenty with them, done massive tailgates in DC and Baltimore for Bills games with them, watched the EJ horror show in London at 8am with them, and now, despite having not taken in a game with them since the 2016 opener, I had to watch this one.

I pulled up to the bar about 4:15, zubaz, Tyrod shirtsy, Bills hat. My fiancé, a die-hard Ravens fan and native Marylander gets out, kisses me goodbye and drives to her cousins while I head upstairs, post-up against the bar and order a bucket of Blue Lights, downing two before kickoff due to nerves and the need to kick the hangover. I see familiar faces, including the guy who wears shirts featuring each week’s opponent- today his is the Dolphins logo, except it’s a dick. The Bills Backers have the upstairs three rooms of this bar, and after taking an early lead you can constantly hear someone yelling out Bengals, Raiders, Jags updates, which solicit groans or cheers. There is t-shirt guy standing on a bench leading us in the shout song, and blue and red touchdown shots. Me or one of the guys on either side of me will say something regarding the Bills game to no one in particular and the others will answer. One of the guys is a little too hard on Tyrod for my taste but it’s okay because across the bar there’s a guy in a Tyrod color rush jersey. People pour down the stairs at halftime to smoke, a tradition I partook in during my time here but now as the only vice I kicked for good in 2017, I work on the second half of my second bucket of blue lights.

The crowd has swollen as we get to the second half. More people are arriving upstairs, mostly 20 and 30-somethings, jerseys of McCoy, Sammy, Mario and Kyle Williams, winter hats and gloves, those Bills shirts with sequins on them. They came to see and share in the moment with the other ex-pats, the ones who will truly understand if it actually happens.

The Dolphins make a game of it, but after Kyle scores at 19-0, people are constantly clamoring for the Ravens game to be put on. The score updates of Oakland and Tennessee have long since stopped and it’s become apparent that we need the Bengals to play very unlike the 2017 Bengals. Poyer’s pick seals the win and soon after the Ravens take their first lead of the game.

It had been a good run, really. 9-7 from a team that I had contending for the first pick in the draft is pretty damn good in a vacuum. But the Peterman game, I’m already fretting that the Peterman game is going to be what keeps us out. Sure, the Bengals can score, but they’ve been outscored 17-7 in the second half and Andy Dalton is spraying throws all over the field. It’s fine though, we know what missing the playoffs is like, and hey, I did have fun for a little while there. Plus I can just root for Missy’s team in the playoffs; I’ve long rooted for the Ravens to do well, just as she texts me in the fourth quarter to say she understands why I can’t do so here.
​
The dagger INT is called back and there’s life but it’s 4th and 13. I have one blue light left, as I know I’m going to want to call an uber soon. My arms are folded in skepticism, not unlike what video shows Kyle Williams doing, standing impatiently with his hands on his hips.

My first thought when Boyd catches it is “first down! Field goal range! Don’t fumble!” I actually thought for a split second the cheering was premature but then- THEN- he sees the Ravens overpursuing, then trying to tackle high for some reason and he scores!

About twenty minutes after it ended, after assuring a few fellow fans that we’d once again be there for the big Bills-Ravens party next season, we sauntered downstairs. I sidled up to the bar, ordered a natty boh to decompress, took a joyous phone call from my buddy, hugged one last Bills fan and climbed into my Uber, gushing to the driver about what had happened as he smiled, perhaps not understanding what had happened but knowing whatever it was had been big and made me VERY happy. When I arrived to the party, instead of catching flack everyone is just happy for me. I’d packed two outfits for the evening, one for making the playoffs and one for not; the zubaz stay on, the jeans in my bag upstairs. Missy says it’s the happiest she’s seen me since our Europe trip because it without a doubt is. We’re the last ones to go to bed in early 2018, long after catching the videos of the Bills fans greeting the team at the airport.
Looking back, the only thing I can compare that evening to is Pominville. For anyone under 30, even that is somewhat tempered by adolescence so for them there is no reference point. Really, over 11 years after that night, there’s no reference point for us either. There’s been graduations, relocations, long relationships starting and ending, marriages, kids, mortgages in between, before even addressing the rapid decay of all ideals and institutions that would allow us to provide a world to our children that isn’t completely and irreparably fucked.

As the godforsaken hole that is Jacksonville is inundated with Bills fans across the country, I don’t know what to think for Sunday. They could win, though I don’t expect them to. Since the Peterman game, they’re 4-2 with their only losses against New England. Fournette is very good, though Blake Bortles is not. The Bills run defense looked stout last weekend, which is a thing. I know a fanbase of yokels serving crappy teal food to their fans Sunday certainly seems to be begging the gods of good taste to put an end to this. But seriously, it’s the definition of house money. Not only is the drought finally, mercifully dead and buried, it was done in a manner that elicited the most raw and spontaneous joy that this region- and those scattered across the land who call it one- has seen in decades. So I won’t ask for more.
​
But I wouldn’t mind it. Go Bills.

On November 29th, 2010 I was doing what I typically do on Sundays late in the Bills season: running errands. On this day, that meant the laundromat down the road from my apartment in Barre, Vermont. The Bills were 2-8, the Steelers 7-3 and in my mind, there was far too much bullshit in my life to let the Bills be part of it. I’d graduated law school a year earlier, entering the workforce with literally the worst graduating year in post-war American history, and my situation at the time reflected that. My 650 foot studio apartment was above the homeowners, a batshit Christian family who homeschooled their kids, one of whom seemed almost certain to commit a mass murder one day. After bringing a girl home one night, I got a call forbidding that in the future (I was 25). I’d made up excuses when my parents would ask to visit, embarrassed that, to my dismay my hastily thought out plan of filling my Buick with my shit and driving 8 hours to take a $14 an hour job wasn’t working out as well as I’d hoped. I’d been the first in my family to go to college, fulfilled the plan I’d had since I was in middle school to get my law degree and in the months following that I’d had an engagement fall apart, found only a $10 an hour data entry position as firms implemented hiring freezes, been put in the hospital from a viral heart infection and shared the tiny apartment with my mom that I’d lived in since I was five. Completely out of ideas I’d hopped in the car to the most isolated place I could think of and only four months in it was becoming apparent that I’d miscalculated, again.

What I’m saying is, I really didn’t need the Bills in my life that day. But it was the laundromat and it was back when you could stream the radio feed for free so there I sat, listening to the game to drown out the sounds of the small child and large dog that also found themselves spending a Sunday afternoon in a miserably boring situation.

They’d been down 13-0 at the half but had made it 13-10 when they forced a turnover and suddenly the idea of missing a comeback upset win for laundry of all fucking things was unacceptable. Eschewing the second load, I headed to Mulligan’s Pub, my go-to since it was both walking distance from my place and the only joint in town with the NHL package. On the way I tossed on the authentic Poz jersey my ex had gotten me for my 24th birthday and eagerly sidled up to the bar where a gaggle of fans rooting for various teams had gathered at tables behind me to watch their games on the bank of televisions.

You probably know by now that this was the Stevie Johnson game. It’s something seared into my brain, staring absently at the television, thoughts skidding down the slipperiest of slopes, turning this Billsy moment in a lost season into something much larger, something personal and more sinister, an indictment of my decision making that went far beyond driving the half mile to the bar. I heard the voice from one of the tables behind me, a woman’s voice. I hadn’t said anything since the drop, hadn’t turned around, interacted or barely moved aside from taking pulls of my blue light.

If there’s one thing about adulthood it’s that it’s interminably boring. To say this comes as a surprise would be somewhat disingenuous; after all we know from a young age that the adults around us operate on a continuous loop of work shifts, errands to procure items to satisfy our need to stay alive, television and sleep. Hell, it’s the general awareness of this looming tedium that drives people to have so much fun in college and their early twenties, the concept that what lies ahead is its own kind of death, a death of spontaneity, a death of new experiences. When that time comes- and it does, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise- it’s not just that it makes the 8-5 routine so crushingly dull, it’s that it makes your life before that tedium seem even further away, make it feel that it happened to another person.​It’s what makes seeing Jason Pominville back on the ice so strange. Despite hanging around in a Sabres uniform until the lockout season, it’s the goal, the president’s trophy, the winter classic that I remember him from, the years where I was in school and anything was possible not just for the Sabres but for the world, for one’s future. To see him back on the ice when everything is just so static- go to work, come back from work, go to the gym, cook dinner, shower, go to bed- and not unspecified is strange. I look at him like a relic despite being only a year older than me, which probably says just as much at how I view myself as how I view him.

Our Beautiful Boys

It’s why sports are still needed. Not simply as a distraction- though believe me, we’ll get there- but because you don’t know what’s going to happen. All day you may discuss your thoughts on twitter, one result may be more likely than another but ultimately you don’t know what you’re going to see, which is a hell of a thing when you’re about to watch Jack Eichel play. It lends the opportunity for something you haven’t seen before, something that provides a surprise in a world where the only surprises are the rotating taps at the bar down the road or finding that salad is buy one get one free at the supermarket. In short, it’s nice to have hockey back again.

I think it’s fair for fans to feel robbed about last season. Year Two AT (After Tank) was supposed to be the first opportunity to enjoy the rewards of the suffering, the trades, the worthless free agents, Andre Benoit, Torrey Mitchell, Ted Nolan, Coyotes updates, Trending Buffalo. It was supposed to include a playoff push at least and that was almost secondary to getting to see how Eichel took hold of the league in his second year. He came back right at the perfect time to serve as a distraction from the anxiety that comes with being made a prisoner of your own country but by that time the team was right back where they’d been every year of the decade before the tank, 8, 10 points back with the season practically a write-off.

January 20th I called in sick, turned off twitter notifications, threw on the Ken Burns Civil War series at around 11am when I started drinking. There was an aura of nihilism, hopelessness, dread that months later hasn’t dissipated so much as settled over the country like the Denora Smog, and struggling to breathe is just how we exist now. As they’ve always been in bad times there was a Sabres game that evening, won in overtime against Detroit by a goal from Okposo. The next night they were in Montreal, trailing late. As my inaugural bender continued they tied it up, Lehner made the save of the year (likely bolstered by a fellow white supremacist being in office) and Bogosian won it again in overtime. They’d provided a brief moment of joy after years of darkness.​Two nights later Eichel makes the play of the year and suddenly a few weeks later I’m watching from the bar at the golf dome with my parents as the Sabres climb one point out of a playoff spot. That was the tease, the brief run that made us think about what could have happened with a full year of Jack, wonder what could happen if they were managed by a coach whose style encouraged players to use their speed to force the opponent into capitulation and not simply hang around and hope for a timely goal. We have all of those things now and as we get ready for the season I must say, it’s terrifying.

EDIT: So if you're reading this you already know. The season's been boarded up. The doors, the locker rooms, everything. We're staying in the Comfort Inn, room 112. I love you.

Or, alternatively you can read what I wrote before the news Eichel will be out 4-6 weeks (say 8 to be safe) because really, truly, it changes little about the enthusiasm or really what your expectations should be.

In every article, book, quote, post I’ve ever read about writing, the one piece of advice that is nearly universal is this: keep writing. Write every day, write something. For many years I did; I wrote in college classrooms during lectures, wrote during work hours in Vermont and Buffalo, wrote at home with the sound of a game in the background. If I wasn’t working on some story (which, from age 12-26 I almost always was), I was working on papers, about the death penalty, the Dred Scott decision, Vatican II, the influence of the frontier on early American Literature (gleamed almost entirely from SparkNotes), or the impact personality had on the Good Friday Agreement.

Point is I can tell you that when it comes to getting words to flow onto the paper/screen, nothing can replace the simple act of beginning to write. You can think about your post while in the car, search your tweets for a coherent #narrative, smoke a blunt and watch a Ken Burns series; nothing is going to help as much as sucking it up, closing the door and starting to type shit out until it clicks.

I say this because for the last few months I’ve had absolutely NO idea what I wanted to say about the upcoming Sabres season. There’s no longer a goal that’s bigger than the game; with the first year of development behind Eichel and Reinhart, and the first year of playing together behind nearly everyone, the shift as gone from “let’s just hope they’re fun and we see improvement” to “okay well now let’s try to make the playoffs.”

The fact that this takes some getting used to is by itself a testament to how shitty the past three seasons have been. The fact I can barely remember what it’s like to be a fan of a team that had expectations and potential makes me want to open my window and scream “what the fuck have we been doing!?”​Then I watch Jack Eichel (EDIT: in 4-8 weeks), Sam Reinhart and Ryan O’Reilly and I’m like, “oh yeah.”

I didn’t think I’d write about this simply because I’ve talked about it so much, written so many words about it while only scratching the surface. I am acutely aware that all of this, the emotional connection I feel to it still today, the memories it elicits comes off both heavy handed and corny. I’m a cynic, antagonistic, dismissive about many things these days (off the top of my head: The election, fake jersey wearers, Rex Ryan, Pennsylvania drivers, my retirement prospects), but this, this was a time where everything- on the surface- seemed perfect. There will be greater moments ahead both in sports and in life but never have they both met in such a beautiful collision for me as what happened in spring 2006. This is that run as I experienced it, as much as I can remember and write without going down the many various tangential rabbit holes that would easily quadruple the size of this piece. If you wanna hear about any of the spinoffs sometime, @ me.

I usually find myself thinking about that playoff run around this time of year and I suppose since you took the time to click this, you do too. However, the ten year anniversary of the 05-06 team has come abruptly, quietly, though I suppose that’s what happens with a team that can’t even claim the most basic banner. They didn’t win their league, their conference, or even their division. Any and all metrics tell us that we should have a greater affinity for teams that came after- in 2007 and 2010 for instance- or before, in the case of 1999 or 1997. Still, The Buffalo News has practically made it a daily feature and even the Sabres twitter account has gotten on board despite the fact everyone in the marketing department thinks the organization was founded in 2010.

This summer is also my ten year college reunion. In what I am sure will shock all of you, none of my friends from Tonawanda High went away to college, and as an only child and the first one in the family to go to college, I felt rather overwhelmed, even at a tiny liberal arts school in Olean. I found some friends but felt awkward, out of place; I loved to drink so that alone got me through a year and a half until I studied abroad. When I returned my junior year, however, it was like a light bulb went off. The day I drove onto campus (drove! Finally!) I went to a party and met the girl that would dominate my memories of that Sabres run and years beyond. I made better and closer friends on campus, established a usual crew, house, bar, a place for the first time as a Bonnie.

Subsequently, after being one of dominant interests through high school, the Sabres found themselves relegated to the back of my mind in college. I’m not even sure we got MSG the first couple years I dormed there (to put it in perspective, I had an actual phone in my room freshman year because there weren’t any cell phone towers); abroad I could only follow the results from checking the TBN website each morning on campus. By junior year and the lockout, I just didn’t care. I was coming into my stride socially, getting acquainted with some of the lovely women on campus, basking in the Red Sox first World Series title in 86 years and for a month in there the Bills actually mattered! Come 2005 and the start of my Senior Year my biggest concerns were, in no particular order:

Breakup with the Long Island girl I’d started dating spring semester for some inexplicable reason

Get into law school at Penn State

Eschew responsibility for fun at every opportunity

Not a bad setting to take in the 05-06 season imo

​My first actual memory of that season was reading Sports Illustrated’s preview issue (Sabres 28th, Hurricanes 29th); my first firm memory of that season was in November. I was home from Bonas for the weekend and had brought a girl with me for the first time. She was the now-sophomore whom I had met at that party my first night back Junior year. Her age mattered little on this trip since there were numerous dive bars around Tonawanda that would serve a 19-year old without question, even more of which that would serve her accompanying usual customers such as my friends. For whatever reason we watched a game against the Senators in my grandparents' basement, several friends who I don’t exactly recall, me and her. As the Sabres took yet another early season shellacking at the hands of this apparent juggernaut (research tells me it was a 6-1 loss), I shook my head and commented to no one in particular “they are so fucking good.”

The boys are back. In this episode, with a delayed release due to Dubs being equal parts overworked and forgetful, The Outlander, The Commander and The Barrister gather from their disparate locations outside of WNY to discuss, in large measure, the value in recognizing expat stories when we discuss the City of Good Neighbors. We also make bad jokes, curse a bunch and talk about beer, the Sabres and awful sports media, as per protocol.
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